


It's All Down-Hill From Here

by girlgamer



Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Detective Comics (Comics), Under the Red Hood
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Batfamily Christmas Exchange 2017, Batfamily Feels, Christmas, Developing Friendships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Gen Work, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-02-11 13:53:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12936669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlgamer/pseuds/girlgamer
Summary: Cass shows up on Jason's doorstep a week before Christmas - Jason's overtired from work and stressed out at having to suddenly deal with a bat he barely knows, but Cassandra's not known for taking no for an answer.The first chapter is Cassandra's point of view, the second is from Jason's.Jason has several moments of anxiety during the fic once it switches to his point of view so trigger warning for that ?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vodka112](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vodka112/gifts).



> For the record I rush wrote most of this during the course of a day so if it's got any typos or mistakes please feel free to point them out in the comments - also just in general, comments are my life blood! Please leave one at the end if you have the time!

"Are you sure you want to do this with _me_?" He asked.

He was trying to sound irritated she knew, trying very hard.

But the tightened slant of his shoulders and the way he kept moving to look away from her instead of making eye contact basically _sang_  vulnerability and confusion.

Even the way his hand gripped around the door as he held it open to talk with her. Obvious.

It made her sad. 

Cassandra wasn't sure whether or not Jason knew she could tell, and she didn't think it was a good idea to mention it when he was already so tense. Besides, vulnerable and confused were both difficult words to say a lot of the time.

Easier to think in her head than force out of her mouth and around her tongue, hard to remember the names of though.

Confusion was the easier one, she always tripped on the syllables of vulnerable.   
The word instead coming out as  _vlnibble_ or _velnebu_ or even just forgot to add the  _able_  after the end of the  _vulner_  part. It was annoying so it was one of those words she avoided on principle unless she was feeling particularly on top of being wordy.

Some words were so simple she could say them without having to think about it, but then when she did think about how to say it beforehand she'd mess them up. 

Like _snap_ , snap was one of those words that sounded like the thing it was and she loved that about it - It was short and simple and slotted into her mind-to-mouth vocab easily, but at a random instant when she'd try to explain that a rope or a bone had snapped to Oracle or Nightwing on the comms she'd mess it up somehow - say something like snipped or snoped instead- or just not be able to get anything of the word out of her mouth at all.

It was a feeling she hated; thinking she had things ready on the tip of her tongue and then realising they weren't where she'd left them anymore.

It was like a tripwire in the dark of her brain. Always ready to unbalance her at the most awkward moments. Unpleasant. It sometimes made it harder to speak _in general_ , it was a discouraging kind of thing and made her doubt herself before she next tried to say something else, she did anyway though.  
  
Vulnerable was probably also maybe harder to say because _confused_ could be funny to watch or see on someones face, could be fun to cause and enjoy and look at.

But _vulnerable_ was always important; sad, painful, innocent, usually reluctantly shown. Cassandra didn't think there should be a word for it, it was that kind of thing. Like innocence, like grief, like longing, sometimes words weren't big enough to encompass the thing they stood for, sometimes feelings were too heavy for their words. 

Oops. He was glaring at her now, "Hey I said, are you sure you wanna do this with _me_?"

He asked like he was expecting her to realise she'd come to the wrong building and climbed the wrong stairs and rang at the wrong door and asked the wrong person. 

"Yes." She nodded seriously. Her bobbed hair bounced as she did it, she normally liked that feeling but not right now.

Jason screwed up his forehead, she wanted to poke it very badly but didn't. 

She'd known from the beginning that convincing him to come out with her would be a difficult thing, if she'd brought Stephanie with her it might've been easier but that would've gone against the point. 

She wanted him to go with her but he was holding himself back, he did that often.

Cassandra didn't understand why the others in the family always said that he had "No restraint".  
Sometimes self-restraint was _all_ she could read off of him.

Looking at it made her body feel stiff and tightly wound in sympathy (... or empathy the difference was always time-consuming to remember) she wondered if he felt like this all the time. That made her want to hug him. Or to get Barbara to hug him, she gave better hugs.

"Couldn't you take Steph or the replacement with you?" He asked. 

His arms crossed, like this was obvious and she shouldn't have bothered him.   
His shoulders still seemed confused as to why she'd want him instead. _Why anyone would want him for anything._

Cass shook her head firmly, "Shopping for them."

"What no present for me? I'm wounded." He cracked a smile teasingly. The corners of his eyes relaxing like this was easier to deal with.

_Resigned, relieved, joyful, mischievous._

She smiled pleased. "Already have yours." 

She laughed at the way his eyebrows rose. Surprise was one of the funny ones sometimes. He rolled his eyes.

"Right..." He hunched his shoulders and sighed, leaning heavily against the doorframe. "Cass honestly I haven't gone Christmas shopping since before I was dead, I am not the right person to ask for this."

"Perfect person to ask." She corrected him.

"Cass-" 

"I will help you pick your gifts and you will help me pick gifts."

"But Cass-"

"Tim is hard." She noted shrewdly, "Everything he likes is bad for him."

He seemed about to retort to that but fiercely shut his mouth and tried again.

"Cassandra I am not going shopping with you."

She frowned at him. "Need help." 

Guilt flashed across his face for an instant but then he just looked angry.

"Look you can literally choose _anyone_ else to help you, you have Oracle and her entire rolodex of random superfreaks to pick from, get someone else."

This was true, she could get Superboy, or Black Canary or Barbara herself to help her. But she wanted Red Hood, she wanted his opinions, wanted to see him being funny or watch his reactions to her choices.

He knew things she didn't about the others even though she spent more time with them. It was interesting.

And she wanted to get him to give something to Steph, because Steph had gotten _him_ something, and it wasn't even a joke gift. It was very sweet.

Stephanie liked Red Hood because he stitched her up and let her crash on his couch when she made mistakes and didn't take it as a chance to lecture her or judge her. Cass didn't understand exactly why that was so important to her but she knew that it was very important.

Cass liked him because she couldn't figure him out, and everything her other brothers said about him either contradicted each other's opinions, or didn't match at all with some of the things he did while completely matching with others.

He was kind, she knew, but he also killed. Contradiction.

Confusing.

A puzzle. 

She liked him because he made Steph feel better when she and Tim couldn't at all, no matter what she tried.   
And because he was warm and was ok with Cass tucking into his side during snowy stake outs, and didn't make a big deal of it when it happened.  
And because he shared food with her when he had it and it usually tasted good.

She disliked him because he killed, but it confused her that he seemed to think it was the only choice available - there was always another choice.

Killing was too easy, _death_ was too easy, Life was too precious. Why couldn't he understand that?

Why couldn't everyone just understand that.

Cassandra never knew what to do or how to feel when Jason made Batman sad. And it happened often.  
Maybe if things had been different she would have gotten in between the two or tried to ward Jason away from him.

But, Batman made Jason sadder than Jason made Batman, much sadder, so it was unfair to only resent Jason for it.

The situation was... complicated.

Whenever anyone mentioned Red Hood's name; whenever he was brought up in passing, whenever the two talked or worked together for a case - something in Batman's body language always looked angry and grieved and _hurt._ Batman missed him like an ache or a badly healed scar. 

Red Hood missed Batman back and it was like a rusty chain.   
It was a painful, heartbroken kind of longing, empty and angry at intervals, hard to look at. So full of all of him at once. 

She didn't know why none of the others saw how much being around Batman hurt the Red Hood, it was like the pain hissed and sizzled and clawed under his skin, obvious, agonising. Like being scalded with oil after having dodged the worst of an explosion. It had to be obvious, didn't it? Even to someone who wasn't like her, surely.   
There were barriers though, maybe Dick and the others would have recognised in each other what they couldn't see at all with Jason, she didn't know for sure. 

It was as if something that stung and burned to the touch was searing at his core from the inside out. 

No wonder he was prone to snapping so much when the two were around each other and always seemed to want to either explode, leave or fade into the background. Sometimes she thought it'd be for the best if Jason exploded at Bruce more, it couldn't be good keeping all that inside without releasing it. It made her think of valves and pressure cookers. It made her think of a rubber band stretched taut.

Jason was even better at restraint now than he had been at first though and the helmet hid things, so most of the time, she was the only one who could tell he was still angry and it frustrated her.

She wanted them to stop hurting each other because she saw how much they missed each other, but she didn't know how to fix it and she didn't  _know_  enough about what it was Jason was actually angry about. And she also didn't know why Batman and Nightwing and Red Robin all seemed to make it worse.

Cass didn't want to become someone who also made it worse for him, but she did want to help him.

"Please come. Look at cups with me." She tried.

"I'm not- wait cups? Why cups?" He asked, thrown, ah she'd skipped ahead.

"Tim broke a lot of cups when he was upset that Damian put poison in his coffee." 

"Crap, Damian's still trying to poison him?! I thought he was _over_  the 'must murder the usurpers and prove myself' thing."

"It was only small bit of poison, not _very_ deadly." She explained, holding up her fingers together to show a pinch.

He shook his head and held the bridge of his nose between his fingers.  _Stress, disbelief, humour._  
"Wow. Just wow."

"He was drinking too much coffee, and needed to stop, little brother meant well." She shrugged. She'd simply been planning to knock him out but Damian's plot had been ahead of hers.

"I bet he got a hell of a lecture."

"Both did.. Alfred was sad. Some of the cups were... important I think? Sen-mental?" She tried to remember the word.

"Sentimental." He offered without thinking. "They had sentimental value. Probably the old Oakley English Bone tea set or the Meissen porcelain set. Did it have gold trim?"

She nodded, they had been white and had flowers on them too.

"Damn, the Oakley then, what the hell was Tim thinking?"

Cass shrugged, "He had not slept in several days... he used a lot of cups." She reflected thoughtfully, "The sink was very full."

Jason seemed annoyed. 

"Of course it was." he spat out caustically. 

For a moment she didn't understand, but she belatedly recognised the sarcasm in his tone.

"So not only did Damian put literal poison into one of the cups from Alfred's favourite tea set - the one he's somehow managed to keep in perfect condition from back when Bruce's parents were _actually_ still alive. Tim then proceeded to go ahead and smash the whole set! AND to add insult to injury! Left Alfie with a fucking mountain of dirty crockery and extra work to deal with, all because the pretender couldn't be goddamn bothered to clean up after himself for once in his life."

He seemed very annoyed, his shoulders were screwing themselves up as he glared. Angry. She waited politely and watched. 

The angry tension made it obvious that his limbs had a _heavyness_ to them that shouldn't have been there.  
He was tired, Cass realised - not usual tired either, body tired and brain tired at the same time. But Red Hood hadn't been around to help them round up all of the rogues before the holidays? Had he really been busy with something else instead of just 'dodging his responsibilities' like Damian had said? He looked suddenly worse than Tim had the other evening.

Only unlike Tim, Jason was hiding it well even from her, which was surprising, usually only the ever-composed Alfred could actually hide the obvious things like _tired and weary_  from her. Though Alfred never seemed to realise that he was doing it when he did it.. and Jason was _definitely_ hiding on purpose. Getting annoyed at the boys had made him slip a little. She didn't like that she hadn't noticed earlier.

He seemed to be furiously thinking several dangerous thoughts at once, his blue eyes flashed with a spark of green, like the fire of a star fizzing across a sky, she noted to herself not to let Tim or Damian go near him on patrol for a while.

He shook himself and seemed to refocus his attention on her.

"So you want to get cups to replace the ones Alfred lost?" He asked at last. 

Cass nodded, feeling hopeful at his interest.

"Was thinking of going to Ikea."

Jason winced. It was a very big wince.

"No?" She asked, not understanding.

He met her eyes, shook his head and spoke the word very slowly, "No."

"Oh." She said.

Jason sighed. "Look I'll help you find a place to look for some decent cups. For Alfred, ok."

She jumped up in excitement.

"But NOT for any of the other shit. You figure out the rest on your _own_. I'm not going Christmas shopping with you for anyone else and I'm just doing this because he puts up with too much goddamn crap from everyone already and he shouldn't have to deal with people destroying the shit he cares about on top of being taken for granted."  
He snarled at the end of the sentence.

She smiled up winningly at him as she nodded in understanding. 

"I'm going back in to get my coat." He muttered at her reluctantly, slamming the door closed behind him.

All things considered, this was going well. Or as well as she could realistically imagine it going. 

Cass was very happy.

 


	2. Chapter 2

It's not right that he has to do this, has to  _deal_  with this, one of Bruce's best little toy soldiers, one of Batman's favourites, on his day off.

Not that this was a  _day off_  so much as a rest day.

He'd been pushing it this week he knew, or really the last two weeks... and a half. But fuck it, he'd been busy.

There'd been a lot of shit to do, and what with the entire family focusing so much on getting the big name Rogues under lock and key in the run up to Christmas, literally all petty crime in Gotham; from the muggings and sexual assaults, to the drug trafficking, to gang trouble to kidnappings to random murders to not-random-murders-at-all by an actual serial killer ring calling themselves 'The Blood Clan' who had somehow managed to slip their way past the collective radar of the GCPD, BCPD and The Bat Family for what must've been at least half a year (and oh he was  ** _so_**  going to shove that under B's nose when he got the chance!) going by the numbers of unsolved killings he'd linked to them.  
Not to mention the fucking alien fight club (which regularly took witless members of their audience to sell abroad on other planets) that had apparently relocated here in Gotham after being run out of Metropolis by Superman, who of course hadn't fucking made sure to finish his job properly, because why would he? ... Jason still had plasma burns on his side from dealing with that one.

Basically the entire brunt of protecting Gotham's people from regular crime had fallen onto him, The Red Hood, while  _everyone else_  frantically hustled after the super villains. The cops too busy processing them all to be of any goddamn use for anything else like  _oh_ , their jobs. Fucking hell, and people still wondered why street crime got so much worse around Christmas, not like the Bats ever got distracted by the rogues or anything right?Jason snorted.

He'd pushed it hard. And his body and his mind were unfortunately both starting to show wear and tear under all the strain.

His reaction time had gotten slower - not by much more than half a second, but enough that he  _felt_  it in clutch time now, which wasn't good.

He'd been up against mostly average to above average crooks in high quantities pretty much every day and night.  
Had soldiered on from task to task, hour to hour like a red hooded terminator, able to manage it  _mostly_  because they were all mooks at least a little below his level, even the clever ones and the tough ones, but if someone serious showed up now ala Deathstroke?  
He'd be pushing things pretty damn close to the edge.

It was an obvious and annoying fact that had hummed and buzzed around the back of his brain near constantly for the whole of the last week and a half, just when he  _didn't_  need to be exerting energy on background stress.  
His concentration was on the up and down now too, tending more and more to be  _on the down_.

Physically, the visible things were just as aggravating. Blue and purple bruises blossoming and throbbing across the skin beneath his clothes, strained overworked muscles, angry half healed cuts, a couple heavier injuries bandaged up, a crick in his neck and a killer headache. Minor shit, all easy to look after if he wasn't continuously on the clock and overtired.

Before this morning he hadn't slept in **six  **days - apart from blacking out for like 2 minutes after a particularly hard knock to the head from an overgrown meta, whom he  _hadn't_  expected to be guarding one of the Ibanescu Family's shiny new drug shipments.  
Sloppy. Not good, Wouldn't have gotten that hit in a week ago. Could've died while he'd been passed out if the muscle-brained meta he'd been fighting hadn't been such a complete idiot. Woulda had time to _look_  into whether or not the Crime Family who's goods he was targeting had hired any new muscle if it'd been  _two_  weeks ago.

And before then he hadn't slept properly in **four**  days, only catching smatterings of rest, thirty minutes here, twenty minutes there, an hour if he was lucky, and he wasn't lucky by nature. So despite finally getting some decent sleep in this morning he was still pretty much running on fumes.

It'd been a while since he'd felt this strung out and just..  _exhausted_.

His eyes ached and stung even when he closed them, he pressed the heel of his palms roughly against both lids.

Judging from how he was feeling he could probably manage another couple of days of it before he hit the real wall.  
He could bypass that too if he had to. 

After all, the old man had trained them overcome their limits again and again, or well that's how Bruce had trained him, Dick and the replacement - the demon brat and creepgirl had learned it from their high quality child-assassin educators. So yeah Jason could keep going if he absolutely needed to, for Gotham.

But he didn't this time, thank fuck.

The other Bats had finally wrapped up the last of the menagerie super villains (A-list to D-list) whom they'd had enough dirt on to keep in jail for Christmas.

Harley and Ivy had apparently skipped the list this year by keeping up their good behaviour streak.. and by virtue of not being in the process of plotting anything  _really_  evil that the Bats could get wind of.

Jason had decided he was going to take full advantage, leaving all the shit from here on to the rest of the Bat Clan for the next couple of days. The ungrateful (not to mention oblivious) idiots deserved it.

Another thing that wasn't fair was that  _just as_  he'd decided to sink into his couch and finally give himself permission to relax, the doorbell had rung and creepgirl had popped up on the security footage giving a quick wave up at him through the camera. And of course he'd gone to the door and doomed himself like a well meaning sucker, just in case shit had hit the fan again despite their best efforts.

Shouldn't have opened the door, she probably wouldn't have known that he was home if he'd just stayed put and ignored her - Oracle couldn't access cameras were there weren't any after all (Wait did Oracle even know her little pet project was here??) - but he hadn't, and now he'd have to deal with the consequences of trying his best to not be an asshole. 

Jason growled to himself as he moved the pot of curry he'd been slow cooking for later off the heat, and threw its contents in the trash.

He wondered absently as he shoved the empty pot into his already overfilled dishwasher, how long he could stay and brood inside his apartment before she started ringing the doorbell again.

Jason didn't know her too well which made her hard to predict.

He'd generally been indifferent to 'Cassandra' - they had a good working relationship when they patrolled together and he hadn't felt like  _rocking_  that perfectly functional boat with 'words' and 'getting to know each other' was a good idea. She hadn't seemed to mind.

They'd been cool with each other he'd thought, they had a dynamic that worked. Comfortably distant but a stable kind of trust in each other's abilities, both of them well able and willing to cover each others' backs when shit inevitably went sideways in one fight or another. Couldn't ask for much better.

But the new Batgirl showing up uninvited on his doorstep a week before Christmas in her civvies had definitely not been within expectations, surely he hadn't been friendly enough to make her feel welcome to hang out with him?

Jason was pretty certain he'd made sure he was on anything  _but_  friendly terms with most of the bats - excluding Spoiler, but she was an outsider in the family like him (Well not like him, nobody was like him. And Steph never killed criminals.) so it was different. Was this just some baseless curiosity about 'the failed robin' thing? The thought rankled him and he felt his lip curl up in instinctive disgust.

Creepgirl definitely coulda gotten Dick orsomeone elseto go shopping with her instead of resorting to knocking on the door of the 'murderous outlaw' vigilante, the bat clan didn't exactly lack for options these days, the family had at least tripled in number since his time as robin... so much for Bruce's ridiculous lone wolf (lone bat?) image.

An alien invasion would have weirded him out less than whatever the hell this was - Jason  _knew_  how to deal with aliens but he had fuck all frame of reference for this shit.  
Jason shook his head, trying to figure out where it had gone wrong, he'd been cool with her before because she seemed the type to mind her own business (more than could be said for most of Bruce's freaky mess of a family, 'detectives' pshh) and Steph had seemed cool with her... but in hindsight Steph was also cool with Dick and the replacement, so her taste was pretty questionable.

Jason groaned and rubbed a hand across his face, then resolutely ignored the way that every sore muscle in his body ached at him for the movement.

He stalked over to his room and pulled out one of his heavier winter coats at random, shirked it on, and grabbed a long dark grey scarf to haul around his neck.

He buried his face in the soft wool around his neck and inhaled the smell. 

 _This is for Alfred,_ he reminded himself,  _Just get in, get the stuff you need to, and get out. Alfred would go the extra mile for you if it were the other way around so pull yourself together and handle it._

The doorbell chimed to life in the background,  _2 minutes 30 seconds_ , Bruce would've given him more time than that. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to focus on not lashing out at anything breakable, which was easy enough seeing as he knew better than to keep what breakable objects he had in his room.

He tried to breath the stress away and ignore the bell for a moment, it didn't work but then it never usually did so he wasn't surprised, he took a couple more deep breaths anyway.

"Yeah, I'm coming." He shouted over the ringing, it stopped almost instantly. 

Jason trudged out of his room, snatched his wallet, keys and phone up off the kitchen countertop, shoved them into his pockets and trudged back over to the doorway.

He braced himself before swinging it open, Cass gazed up at him expectantly looking like she hadn't moved at all from her spot since he'd retreated back inside his apartment. He sighed, "Let's get this over with."

"You will have a good time if you let yourself." She told him, smiling a little, Jason glared down at her as he shut the door, he flipped the switches for the security traps,  hit the fingerprint scan open on his phone with his thumb and walked past her.

"Shut up." 

She nodded and they fell into patient silence as they waited for the elevator together. _If only that worked so well with other people,_ he thought grimly.

  
This was one of the things about the new Batgirl that made her difficult to resent, she was disturbingly difficult to stay angry with.

Was aggravatingly  _not_  aggravating a thing? Jason knew he'd always found Dick annoyingly perfect and self righteous, but this was undeniably different to that.  
Dick _was_  aggravating after all, that was his whole schtick as the 'peppy' crime fighter.

But Cassandra?  
Apart from showing up uninvited on his rest day and deciding (in spite of his wishes) to make him come out shopping with her, Cassandra  _didn't_  irritate him, not usually anyway, today being the exception.

Fact was she was easy to work with, quick to pick up on silent cues in a fight and - wonder of wonders - actually accepted limits and boundaries when she was made aware of them, she didn't poke at things he didn't want to talk about or try to 'fix' him and his issues with impromptu therapy sessions like his other would-be siblings did.  
-Excluding Damian who as far as Jason could see spent most patrols insulting and belittling his partners, regardless of age, gender or size difference. Demon Spawn.

And best of all Cassandra'd never lectured him for beating a criminal more than was strictly necessary. They usually deserved the extra when he did go overboard in front of her after all.

He'd been annoyed at first when he'd heard that Babs had been replaced with another model by Bruce too, just because she couldn't fight the same way the rest of them did anymore. Batgirl was Barbara Gordon as far as he was concerned, legs or no legs, and hearing that the mantle had been passed on to someone he hadn't met at the time had given him extremely mixed feelings, ones he still needed time to parse.

Although apparently Barbara had actively sanctioned it? He didn't know the full story. But according to Stephanie (who was a huge gossip when she didn't have his food in her mouth) Barb was the new Bg's mentor  _alongside_  Bruce - which at least meant a 50/50 sane advice ratio - so the new girl had that going for her at least. How Barb had managed to wrestle co-mentor status from B's control freak hands was a question for the ages.  Just another thing on the list of what he'd missed while he was dead and then crazy.

But none of that meant he trusted Cassandra, he didn't know her motives for wanting him out with her and it was honestly freaking him out. This felt like a trap.

It probably wasn't a trap.

He'd been on good-ish terms with the bats lately... other than dropping out of contact with them completely over the last half a month - but again he'd been  _busy_  and it wasn't like it was any of their business whether he decided to keep in contact with them or not, a familiar coldness settled in the pit of his stomach.

_Shit, shit, shit._

He didn't want to be here, he didn't want to do this, he was not in good condition right now, had she noticed? She'd probably noticed, she always noticed the shit people didn't want her to. She could take him down easily the way he was right now. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Why hadn't he fucking slept more? -Because none of the criminals he'd had to beat up kept to the same sleep schedule. That did not make this better. Damn it.

Jason startled at a tap on his shoulder. He glanced up, the creaky elevator doors were open and he hadn't even noticed, he'd probably been vacantly staring at them for he didn't know how long while he dealt with his internal mini freakout and Cassandra was looking up at him all pouty and stupidly concerned. He shrugged her hand off roughly and got into the elevator.

 _Because obviously the best thing to do when you're with a highly trained ex-assassin/current caped crusader is trap yourself in an enclosed space with them and hope your claustrophobia isn't acting up today!_  

Had he always been this sarcastic? Yes, definitely, but not as whiny. Or pathetic. He was annoying himself with his own thoughts.

His head was doing the thing again, fishing for bad feelings in already murky waters.

She hopped into the elevator just as the doors started closing, sending them sliding apart again just to give her unneeded time to get in, she huffed and quickly started pressing the close-door button repeatedly while Jason crossed his arms and looked in the opposite direction.

The elevator doors creaked to a close at last and the stilted tinkly tone of the broken piano recording the landlord never bothered to fix or change began to filter through the old speakers on the ceiling.

Jason tried doing some breathing exercises to pass the time it took for the elevator to work it's way down the building, because of course it was the sort of glitched out elevator that had to open for a full minute at every floor on the way to the ground.

At least Jason's place was only on the sixth floor of the building instead of any higher, so the annoyance was reassuringly short lived whenever he did bother to use the elevator instead of the stairs, this building wasn't one of his red hood hideouts after all but one of the places he kept ready for when he needed to reboot or rest somewhere while still keeping his ear to the ground, he also kept it because it was conveniently right smack in the middle of crime alley where he usually did most of his work - when he wasn't doing the work of ten to fifteen bats by himself. Seriously when had the extended family gotten so big? Batwings and Batwomen and Bluebirds. So many players and still the same levels of crime.  _Always_  the same levels of crime if not the same types year to year, steady statistics and continuous numerical standards of mayhem. Jason supposed nothing ever changed in Gotham except the faces and the names.

And sometimes not even the names.. they were on the third floor by the time Batgirl 2.0 decided to speak up again.

"Not sure what to get Batman." She told him experimentally.

 He grimaced in reaction but refused to respond.

"He already has.. things he needs for crime fighting, and he can buy anything he wants for... other stuff." She continued as the doors closed again and the tinkly (skipping several notes in bad places there) piano song started back up.

Jason decided to let Silence do the talking for him, hopefully she'd eventually realise she was just talking to herself and trail off.

"He doesn't need anything but I want to give him something." She explained indefatigably, not taking the hint, she looked over at him to see if he was going to reply at all.

Jason swallowed back several snappy retorts with difficulty;  _he needs a strong kick up the ass, he needs to get over himself, he needs to sort out his useless antiquated priorities, _he needs to get down off his high horse for once in his goddamn life,_  he needs to stop adopting people while other people are dead and therefore out of the loop, he needs to go fuck himself. He needs to leave me alone._

He settled for giving her a look that he hoped conveyed his utter contempt. 

It was dumb but the fact that his initial urge was to tell her that B would probably love just about anything one of his kids got for him filled him with an irrational sting of anguish and anger. Of course it'd be a cold day in hell before he'd ever so much as mutter Bruce's praises again, but there was no denying that present receiving had been one of the few areas of parenting where the old man had been actively decent. Even going so far as verbalising his appreciation.

Jason shook his head before he went and remembered something stupid. None of the past mattered anymore, and these days B was such a gigantic fucking asshole who  _knew_  whether or not he'd gone and changed his stance on the emotional viability of time consuming holiday traditions to something more obliviously passive aggressive and sombre. Bruce was so testy about every little thing now that it honestly wouldn't surprise him.

They reached the second floor before Cass could start talking again and a hassled looking lady with stringy brown hair got on, calling a temporary break to not-so-quiet-today's verbal poking.

If he was remembering the background check files for this place on his laptop right.. Abigail Burke.

Call him paranoid but he had checks on file for all the people who lived in the same buildings as him, computer updated automatically every four months whether he was staying in them or not, he knew from experience that it wasn't a funny haha feeling to find out you were hiding out in the same crashpad as a rogue. 

The lady was a single mother of five who waitressed down at the Wendys round the corner. Husband in jail for petty theft.  
Something about the desperate embarrassment in her eyes as she tried and failed to fix her hair upon seeing his and Cassandra's very not-thrift-store looking winter outfits reminded him of his mother.  
He felt a twinge of heartache as she turned her back to them and fumbled with her washed out pink muffler, tense and anxious. Shit, he shouldn't have worn a coat like this one in this part of Gotham.

But he'd been distracted and it had been his warmest thing and he hadn't thought about- he was still an idiot. Why _hadn't_  he thought of it?  
He expected this kind of oblivious crap from his brothers not from himself.

Jason felt a lump of shame rising in his throat, God what would his younger self - the kid who had to pickpocket to stay alive - think of him if he saw him now, another rich clown lording his wealth over everyone else just by standing around in the same breathing space, silently fucking judging everything and- wait what the fuck was Cassandra doing taking off her coat, was she going to-? Fuck.

He gave her a hard shove in the shoulder, the woman in front didn't look up at all thankfully, hands still fidgeting with her ratty pink muffler.

Cassandra gazed back up at him in obvious confusion, he mentally swore - this little... _naive_  idiot. God who even..? He bit down on the rage, tried to shove it down to deal with later and shook his head at her hard.

She seemed about to argue the point but on getting a look at his eyes thankfully decided to let it go and pulled her already halfway off yellow coat back on properly, fingering the black buttons uncertainly. Jason huffed a sigh of relief and eased back over to his side of the elevator.

The doors opened for the first floor and the trio waited awkwardly for the minute to pass, while Jason silently fumed.

Because giving your oh so expensive coat to someone out of the goodness of your heart was a fucking- god what a fucking insult. The woman wasn't a beggar, she- you don't just- you don't do that and fucking common sense was a thing even for people like, like them, even Bruce wouldn't-

Words flashed angrily through his head. Words like _pity_  and  _humiliation_  and  _superiority._ And he barely restrained the urge to swear out loud.

This was ridiculous.

Maybe it was because he'd already paralleled the lady to his mom in his head, but the idea of someone just giving her or him a costly clothing item just because they could afford to... it was so demeaning.

And it spiked him with so much sudden indignation and directionless fury and... God, it  _had_  happened... he remembered, at a parent teacher meeting back when Catherine hadn't been too sick to go out yet and still tried to go to his school things.

He was always happy at the teacher's meeting days those days even though they were long and all the other bored kids complained while they waited around for their folks together in the classrooms. He'd always been more than willing to stick it out even with nothing to read or do, because they made his mom happy, his teachers always praised him and he got to see her smile.

And then after it was mostly over, and people were gathering their things and their kids and heading to leave, another mother, of a kid he didn't know, had taken one look at his mom - not yet frail looking but still hard worked and shivery at first glance, and had given her a.. what had it been? A scarf or something? In front of all the other parents in the room. He still remembered the way his mother's face had uncharacteristically flooded red as she'd tried to stutter out a thank you as the lady handed her the gift;

And it was different somehow, completely  _different_  to when they went and got their own things from goodwill shops or from charity places at Christmas.

And God.. she'd kept it. Because there was no way she'd get something like it on her own sweat. Let alone her deadbeat husband's.

He'd been a bubble of rage and shock during the whole scene and she'd stopped him from leaping to her defence with a look, and he'd screamed about it and who the hag had thought she was in the car, all the way home. And his mom hadn't been happy anymore then, even though he'd been extra good for his teacher just so she would be. And when they'd finally got back to the squashed-in rooms of their tiny crumbling disaster of an apartment building she'd asked him not to worry about it, so he'd tried his best not to bring it up again, even though it smarted every damn time he'd seen her use the thing and regretted he couldn't get her something nicer on his own so she wouldn't have to bear it. 

Jason hadn't remembered that scarf or.. or shawl or whatever it had been, in years. Why would he? It was just another shit moment on the evergrowing list of awful events that was his life from then to now, it wasn't like Catherine hadn't been publicly embarrassed by their situation time after time again, even in the privacy of their own home when she lay loopy and dying. 

It felt like there was acid bile on the inside of his mouth, he forced himself to swallow three times to try and get rid of the imaginary taste, it wasn't working and this was not the time for this. He squeezed his eyes shut and tensed as he tried to push the thoughts back down again. A tap on his shoulder came almost at once and he startled again, noticing the doors were open for the ground floor and the woman had vanished.

He glanced down at Cass. She stared back, brow furrowed. 

Jason sighed, it looked like her snapping him out of his head when he zoned off was going to be a trend today.  
Maybe it was just as well he was out if his mind was gonna be at him like this...

He swallowed again, his mouth still tasted like it was getting ready for him to vomit, acidy-sweet and too warm saliva. He pushed down the urge to gag on empty air with an attitude of resignment to a shitty day. (week... month... life..)

He needed a cigarette.

"I... Upset you? When I tried to give her my.." She trailed off, unsure and still fingering the buttons of her coat.

Jason heaved another sigh and scrubbed a hand across his face as he started walking, she followed after him keeping pace despite the difference in stride length easily.  
Fuck it.

"Yeah I guess, Sort of. It's.. You would've embarrassed her if you'd given her that."

"Huh? But she..?" Cass frowned, as they left the building, the rush of cold air bracing them as Jason power walked down the street."But she wanted it."

Had she? He wondered, oh well.. creepgirl would have known he guessed.

He sighed, "Yeah maybe, still woulda humiliated her if you gave it though."

"I don't understand."

Jason scowled at her.

"Well I don't know how to explain it so you do." he spit out venomously.

He paced faster out of frustration, more carelessly, barely avoiding an old drunk heading the opposite direction to them because of it, Cassandra sidestepped the geezer's wild staggering movements easily without pause and for some reason that pissed him off too.

"Why would she be embarrassed though? I'm fine without it and.. and I could _tell_  that she wanted it." Cass bit her lip, thinking. "Why wouldn't she like it if I gave it to her?" She argued.

He stared at her. "Why? HOW CAN YOU NOT FUCKING GET IT?! Because-" Jason struggled realising he was raising his voice despite himself, "Just because ok!"

"She might have been... happy if I gave it to her! Why did you stop me?"

"The world doesn't work like that batgirl." He snarled, his steps quickening in time with his mood. "Just- She would've been insulted if you gave it to her. She woulda felt-  _pitied_."

"But why!"

He rounded on her, "BECAUSE. Alright, just accept it and move on! Don't- don't try to give random civilians shit they don't need like that."

She crossed her arms and gave him an extremely unimpressed look in response to the shouting, "Because what?" She asked.

Jason swore furiously and viciously resisted the urge to kick a nearby trash can. He curled his hands into fists and buried them in his pockets.

"...I can not understand you if you do not tell me how." She tried tentatively.  
  
Jason laughed to himself, a harsh hysterical sound that burst out against all reason and sunk it's way into his nerves long after he'd snapped his mouth shut.  
Cass flinched. He didn't blame her.

The two of them stood in tense uncomfortable silence, both staring (or in Jason's case, glaring) down at their feet and at the old crumbling patchwork of tarmac and concrete beneath them.

Jason shut his eyes and tried to ignore the echoes of the plea she'd made. But it'd been an honest one and he was already tired of the argument. Maybe he was just tired in general. He let the sudden urge to leave her here and go back to his rooms to fall asleep again, wash over him just so he could shrug it off.

"I really don't know how to explain it, in words."

"It's fine, I am not good with  _words_  either." Cass pointed out.

He huffed a laugh, "Yeah. But I really don't... it's just... you can't.. I mean, you have something she doesn't and that's shit, it is, but I mean it's also life. "

"And you can't just...  _fuck_ , Cassandra, you're a  _teenager_  and she's a grown woman who's probably been working all her life and you've already got more money than she's ever had. And she's probably gonna be working for most if not all'a the rest of her life too, and you still probably already have more than she's ever gonna make."

Jason lightly kicked a shard of brown beer glass off the kirb.

"But.. You- you can't just..  _rub_  that in someone's face, the world does that to people enough. You don't need to tell people they don't got a lot, they know that better than anyone. You don't need to show people how much better your life is or always will be to theirs. Believe me, they're not stupid and they see how things are. And I know you didn't actually mean anything bad like that, I'da kicked your ass if I thought you did - Don't look at me like that, I would and I could if i wanted to."  

She gave him a small grin to which he rolled his eyes, "We're not sparring right now." 

"Coward."

"Public area." He shrugged, gesturing at the increasingly dotted streets as they rounded a corner.

"Still."

"Whatever. Did you get any of what I said?"

Cassandra hesitated, "I think... I understand better than I did." She hedged.

"Yeah, like I said, I don't know how to say it so you get it. But y'know.. If you'd given her that," He gestured at the coat. "Something she wanted and is probably never gonna be able to get on her own effort? It'd just be underlining how meaningless it is to you, that thing she (according to you) wanted so much, that you could afford to just throw it away on a whim." He scrubbed his eyes tiredly. "I don't.. I dunno maybe she woulda been happy to get it anyway. People respond differently to shit. I know. But.." He sighed, "I honestly don't think it woulda worked out the way you thought it would've."

Cass listened intently and nodded. "I get it."

"You do?"

"It's like if.. a criminal, tried to throw away their family or use them as hostages... I'd be mad about that. It took me a long time to find mine."

"Pretty decent example."

"Or if someone threw out good food for no reason."

"Way better example." He grinned.

She giggled and he felt his shoulders ache as a little bit of the tension that had gathered there over the course of the last few weeks drained away from them.

"I'm sorry I've been so shitty to you today." 

She shrugged, "My fault. You were tired. I pushed."

"Yeah... Well, I still shouldn't have treated you like that, you haven't done much to me except be mildly infuriating and it was mostly unintentional so y'know.. I'll try not to snap at you anymore today."

Cassandra gave a quick nod, "Where are we going for the cups?"

"Do you know were Bruce's main tailor's shop is?"

She nodded.

"The shop we're going to's around the corner from that street. Alfred took me there to wait with him once while Bruce was getting his measurements taken." It'd been a nice day, he'd gotten to listen to Alfred chatting about tea and crockery under the pretext of education all morning, they'd both had a good time.

"Okay," She said. "Taxi?"

"When we get out of the narrows."

Most sane cabbies didn't come anywhere near this side of town if they weren't in the humour to play lottery with their lives. Jason guessed a 'passenger' only had to hold you at gun point and ask for your take for the night so many evenings a week before the taxi comp you worked at started diverting the routes  _around_  the problem. Not that people didn't try it in other parts of Gotham but in Crime Alley the rate of would be stick ups was honestly ridiculous.

That reminded him of another rumour he'd heard about, there was still a serial killer masquerading as a taxi driver over somewhere near the diamond district, he was gonna have to deal with that soon as he'd gotten more than two nights sleep in a row. God, this city. 

"Okay." She smiled and linked her arm around is, ignoring the half hearted glare he threw her.

He huffed and let himself sink into the mismatched sounds of a daylit crime alley floating over from a block away, the usual beeping honking and roaring of cars in the distance, garbled chatter and the odd screech. Hungover or sleep deprived denizens trying to get on with their business. Most of the folks around here were night shift workers, actual ones not the  _other_  kinda night shift, and hearing them drive their brats to class and try to out roadrage the daylight crowd was something Jay always found entertaining.

The sounds helped.

_Beeeeeeep_

Until they didn't.

Cassandra popped a hand into her pocket, knocked off the chiming ringtone and pressed the phone to her ear as Jason guided them over to a side alley away from prying eyes. Cass frowned at whatever she was hearing over the phone, Jason raised an eyebrow at her.

 _Oracle_  she mouthed.

Which could really mean anything from  _why are you out with jason he's unstable and i have surveillance video footage proof to back me up so you're gonna be grounded in the next ten seconds unless you have an excuse_   to _there's an alien invasion and everyone's gonna die._

"I'm in the narrows and I don't have my suit, it will take me a while to get to there." Batgirl told her, Jason could hear the static of something being said in response but couldn't make out a word of it.

Batgirl locked the phone and glanced up at him.

"Well?" He asked.

"Supervillain attack."

Jason swore, "I thought the cops just got finished locking them all up?" Fucking Arkham security. "Who's out?" He demanded.

"No break outs. It's Poison Ivy. She's in Robinson Park. Oracle said she's angry about the Christmas trees."

"Figures. Her girlfriend?"

Cassandra shook her head, "She's there, but she's not um... doing anything?"

"Just along for the ride?"

"Yep." 

"Ok, you better head and I'll-"

Jason startled as his communicator buzzed in his pocket. Cass smiled "Your turn."

Jason rolled his eyes. "This about Poison Ivy? Coz me and C-"

"Yes." The clipped, professional tones of Oracle's familiar electronic voice filtered down the line, he felt his mind snap into bat mode clarity on reflex as she laid out the brief, Babs had a way of making people ready when she needed them to be, it was nice. In a capable commanding officer kind of way.

"She's taken control of most of Robinson park and it's getting violent, Red Robin and Batman are holding her off but we could use some more muscle. Aside from that, Harlequin's stolen an elf outfit and a megaphone, and refuses to stop climbing onto peoples' vans or chanting 'Free the pines' but otherwise she's not doing much. On the scene but low threat level mood so far, don't forget she's there but don't let her distract you. It's Ivy's show. Batgirl and Nightwing are already on route but they're delayed. How fast can you get there?"

"Honestly probably not as soon as you'd like but if I run back to my apartment and grab my motorcycle I can be there in twenty. I'll have to break some speed limits though, all of the speed limits."

"Just so long as you don't crash" She quipped. 

Jason gasped in mock offence, "Oh Ye of little faith." 

"Oh ye of little common sense, drive safe but get there fast. Oracle out."

He turned to Cass, "Looks like we're gonna have to delay the Christmas Shopping."

"Shop later. Let's go back to your place."

"You alright with borrowed gear and sitting behind me on the bike?"

"Yes. Your place. Now." She said shoving him in the back and propelling him forwards.

"Alright alright. God the things I do for this family." Jason laughed.

**Author's Note:**

> Ok so this was originally intended to be better and longer but I caught a really bad cold/flu this christmas and ended up having to pull an all nighter today in order to get all seven thousand and something words of this finished and I still only have like a half hour left before the deadline.  
> So I'm very sorry if the person this fic is for Vodka112 doesn't end up enjoying it, but I really really tried and I can't tell whether this fic is terrible or ok anymore so I'm just going to post it anyway rather than default on the deadline.  
> I am stress. Stress is me.  
> I have become myself.  
> *Fingerguns*


End file.
